Groggily she opened her eyes, the boy’s fading shriek still echoing in her mind. She was on her back on the stone walk, her head spinning. Until that cleared, she had as much chance of embracing saidar as a cat did of singing. Not that it made any difference, now. She could see the shield Merean was holding on her, and even a weaker woman could maintain a shield once in place. She tried to rise, fell back, managed to push up on an elbow.
Only moments had passed. Lan and Ryne still danced their deadly dance to the clash of steel. Brys was rigid for more than his bonds, staring at Merean with such implacable hate it seemed he might break free on the strength of his rage. Iselle was trembling, snuffling and weeping and staring wide-eyed at where the boy had fallen. Diryk. Moiraine made herself think the boy’s name, flinched to recall his grinning enthusiasm. Only moments.
“You will hold a little longer for me, I think,” Merean said, turning away from her. Brys rose above the walk. The stocky man’s face never changed, never stopped staring hatred at Merean.
Moiraine struggled to her knees. She could not channel. She had no courage left, no strength. Only determination. Brys floated over the railing. Moiraine tottered to her feet. Determination. That look of pure hate etched on his face, Brys fell, never making a sound. This had to end. Iselle lifted into the air, writhing frantically, throat working in an effort to scream past her gag. It had to end now! Stumbling, Moiraine drove her belt knife into Merean’s back to the hilt, blood spurting over her hands.
They fell to the paving stones together, the glow around Merean vanishing as she died, the shield on Moiraine vanishing. Iselle screamed, swaying where Merean’s bonds had let her drop, atop the stone railing. Pushing herself to move, Moiraine scrambled across Merean’s corpse, seized one of Iselle’s flailing hands in hers just as the girl’s slippers slid off into open air.
The jolt pulled Moiraine belly-down across the railing, staring down at the girl held by her blood-slick grip above a drop that seemed to go on forever. It was all Moiraine could do to hold them where they were, teetering. If she tried to pull the girl up, they would both go over. Iselle’s face was contorted, her mouth a rictus. Her hand slipped in Moiraine’s grasp. Forcing herself to calm, Moiraine reach for the Source and failed. Staring down at those distant rooftops did not help her whirling head. Again she tried, but it was like trying to scoop up water with spread fingers. She would save one of the three, though, if the most useless of them. Fighting dizziness, she strove for saidar. And Iselle’s hand slid out of her bloody fingers. All Moiraine could do was watch her fall, shrieking a long, dwindling cr
y, hand still stretched up as if she believed someone might yet save her.
An arm pulled Moiraine away from the railing.
“Never watch a death you don’t have to,” Lan said, setting her on her feet. His right arm hung at his side, a long slash laying open the blood-soaked sleeve and the flesh beneath, and he had other injuries besides the gash on his scalp that still trickled red down his face. Ryne lay on his back ten paces away, staring at the sky in sightless surprise. “A black day,” Lan muttered. “As black as ever I’ve seen.”
“A moment,” she told him, her voice unsteady. “I am too dizzy to walk far, yet.” Her knees wavered as she walked to Merean’s body. There would be no answers. The Black Ajah would remain hidden. Bending, she withdrew her belt knife from the woman’s back and cleaned it on the traitor’s skirts.
“You are a cool one, Aes Sedai,” Lan said flatly.
“As cool as I must be,” she told him. Diryk’s scream rang in her ears. Iselle’s face dwindled below her. As in the test for the shawl, all her calm was outward show, but she clung to it tightly. Let go for an instant, and she would be on her knees weeping. Howling with grief. “It seems Ryne was wrong as well as a Darkfriend. You were better than he.”
Lan shook his head slightly. “He was better. But he thought I was finished, with only one arm. He never understood. You surrender after you’re dead.”
Moiraine nodded. Surrender after you are dead. Yes.
It took a little while for her head to clear enough that she could embrace the Source again, and she had to put up with Lan’s anxiety to let the shatayan know that Brys and Diryk were dead before word came that their bodies had been found on the rooftops. Understandably, he seemed less eager to inform the Lady Edeyn of her daughter’s death. Moiraine was anxious about time, too, if not for the same reasons. She should have been able to save the girl. That death lay on her as much as on Merean.
She Healed Lan as soon as she was able, and he gasped in shock as the complex weaves of Spirit, Air and Water knit up his wounds, flesh writhing together into unscarred wholeness, but she felt no satisfaction that he finally showed himself mortal. He was weak afterward, drained by Healing atop his fight, weak enough to catch his breath leaning on the stone rail. He would run nowhere for a while. She had to make sure he knew what to say. And she had other plans for him.
Carefully she floated Merean’s body over that rail on flows of Air, and down a little, close to the stone of the mountain. Flows of Fire, and flame enveloped the Black sister, flame so hot there was no smoke, only a thick shimmering in the air, and the occasional crack of a splitting rock.
“What are you—?” Lan began, then changed it to “Why?”
She let herself feel the rising heat, currents of air fit for a furnace. “There is no proof she was Black Ajah, only that she was Aes Sedai.” She winced at her slip. The White Tower needed its armor of secrecy again, more than it had when Malkier died, but she could not tell him that. Not yet. But he did not so much as blink at mention of the Black Ajah. Perhaps he was ignorant of it, but she would not wager on it. The man was as self-contained as any sister. “I cannot lie about what happened here, but I can be silent. Will you be silent, or will you do the Shadow’s work?”
“You are a very hard woman,” he said finally. That was the only answer he gave, but it was enough.
“I am as hard as I must be,” she told him. Diryk’s scream. Iselle’s face. There was still Ryne’s body to dispose of, and the blood on the floorstones, on their clothing. As hard as she must be.
Epilogue
Next dawn found the Aesdaishar in mourning, white banners flying from every prominence, the servants with long white cloths tied to their arms. Rumors in the city already talked of portents that had foretold the deaths, comets in the night, fires in the sky. People had a way of folding what they saw into what they knew and what they wanted to believe. The disappearance of a simple soldier, and even of an Aes Sedai, escaped notice alongside bone-deep grief that had strong men weeping in the corridors.
Returning from destroying Merean’s belongings—after searching in vain for any clue to other Black sisters—Moiraine stepped aside for Edeyn Arrel, who glided down the hallway in a white gown, her hair cut raggedly short. Whispers said she intended to retire from the world. Moiraine thought she already had. The woman’s staring eyes looked haggard and old. In a way, they looked much as her daughter’s did, in Moiraine’s mind, full of despair and the knowledge of death coming soon.
When she entered her apartments, Siuan leaped up from a chair in the sitting room. It seemed weeks since Moiraine had seen her. “You look like you reached into the bait well and found a fangfish,” she growled. “Well, it’s no surprise. I always hated mourning when I knew the people. Anyway, we can go whenever you’re ready. Rahien was born in a farmhouse almost two miles from Dragonmount. Merean hasn’t been near him, as of this morning. I don’t suppose she’ll harm him on suspicion even if she is Black.”
Not the one. Somehow, Moiraine had almost expected that. “Merean will not harm anyone ever again, Siuan. Put that mind of yours to a puzzle for me.” Settling in a chair, she began with the end, and hurried through despite Siuan’s gasps and demands for more detail. It was almost like living it again. Getting to what had led her to that confrontation was a relief. “She wanted Diryk dead most of all, Siuan; she killed him first. And she tried to kill Lan.”
“That’s mad,” Siuan growled. “What links an eight-year-old boy to a coldhearted lionfish like Lan?”
“Luck. Diryk survived a fall that should have killed him, and everyone says Lan is the luckiest man alive or the Blight would have killed him years ago. It makes a pattern, but the pattern looks crazy to me. Maybe your blacksmith is even part of it. And Josef Najima, back in Canluum, for all I know. He was lucky, too. Puzzle it out for me if you can. I think it is important, but I cannot see how.”
Siuan strode back and forth across the room, kicking her skirt and rubbing her chin, muttering about “men with luck” and “the blacksmith rose suddenly” and other things Moiraine could not make out. Suddenly she stopped dead and said, “She never went near Rahien, Moiraine. The Black Ajah knows the Dragon was Reborn, but they don’t bloody know when! Maybe Tamra managed to keep it back, or maybe they were too rough and she died before they could pry it out of her. That has to be it!” Her eagerness turned to horror. “Light! They’re killing any man or boy who might be able to channel! Oh, burn me, thousands could die, Moiraine. Tens of thousands.”
It did make a terrible sense. Men who could channel seldom knew what they were doing, at least in the beginning. At first, they often just seemed to be lucky. Events favored them, and frequently, like the blacksmith, they rose to prominence with unexpected suddenness. Siuan was right. The Black Ajah had begun a slaughter.